More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
Canada Day has kicked off the unofficial start of summer, and the tourism sector is hopeful the first season in three years largely free of COVID-19 restrictions will marshal a much-needed boost for a pandemic-stricken industry.
It has been slow to bounce back as new COVID-19 variants and public health measures deterred domestic and foreign travellers, but as cases drop and restrictions lift there are signs of recovery across the country.
Some tour operators are scrambling to find staff to fill a surge in demand and hotels are reporting occupancy rates near pre-pandemic levels.
"This summer will be the summer of recovery," said Catherine Callary, vice president with Tourism Ottawa.
Canada's tourism industry GDP was down nearly 50 per cent in 2020, according to Statistics Canada, compared to an economy-wide 5.4 per cent drop.
And while there is optimism, the most recent Statistics Canada numbers show the recovery is far from complete.
Domestic tourism activity, which compiles data such as travel movement and spending, was down 20 per cent this March compared to 2019. And international tourism activity was 57 per cent behind pre-pandemic levels.
Callary estimates Ottawa lost out on $3 billion in the tourism industry over the pandemic. The demand for hotel rooms, however, has bounced back and now sits around 15 per cent below pre-pandemic levels, she said.
"Tourism operators are not going to be able to recoup the lost revenues from the past two years. Those are not revenues that they can recoup. But we can move forward, we can recover," she said.
Off the coast of Newfoundland, whale watching boats loaded with tourists are back in Atlantic waters. Mike Gatherall, director of Gatherall's Puffin and Whale Watch south of St. John's, said business is booming.
The 38-year-old family business had a banner year in 2019, Gatherall said. But 2022 is exceeding those numbers.
Bookings are up nearly 40 per cent, he said.
"(This year) so far, has actually been quite busy. A very healthy rebound, certainly, for our operation," he said.
Government support and some prudent financial planning helped the business retain its staff throughout the pandemic, Gatherall said. But challenges still remain.
The rising cost of fuel is making it more expensive to operate the boats. And he says a shortage of rental cars could make it hard for would-be customers to make the trip from the city to the rural coast.
In the Toronto-area, hotel occupancy surpassed 80 per cent in June for the first since the pandemic started, said Destination Toronto executive vice-president Andrew Weir.
While leisure travel is expected to drive this summer's recovery, he said it could be years before the city sees the full return of large-scale conferences. Those events are a big boost to local business, whether it's florists, caterers, or audio-visual companies, Weir said.
"Until both of those engines are firing at full steam, the visitor economy won't have fully recovered," he said.
Longtime Toronto walking tour guide Jason Kucherawy said his company, Tour Guys, was inundated with requests in April from local school groups arranging field trips for May and June.
He had to turn down some requests this spring as he scrambled to find guides, after the business had scaled back to a skeleton operation during the pandemic.
The company ran tours in Ottawa, Hamilton and Toronto for 15,000 people in 2019, a record year for the 14-year-old company. By 2021, just 500 people attended a tour.
But so far 1,000 people have joined a tour this May and June alone, he said.
"And we're just getting into our peak tourism season. So I know that looking ahead, we've got a lot of bookings now for July and August, as people are planning their trips to Canada. And most of our business, for us, it's Americans. That's three-quarters of our business," said Kucherawy, who serves as president of the Tourist Guide Association of Toronto.
U.S. residents took 759,600 trips to Canada this April, eight times more than April 2021, but less than half of the 2019 trips, according to the latest Statistics Canada numbers on international arrivals.
American visitors are also slowly starting to return to one of the most iconic tourist attractions on the Prairies, said West Edmonton Mall general manager Danielle Woo. But with inflation raising the cost of travel, she said the mall has seen much of its business from the "staycation" crowd, either from within Alberta or nearby provinces.
"I would say at this point, we are definitely where we were or better than we were pre-pandemic as far as what the mall feels like as a whole," Woo said.
The Skwachays Lodge in Vancouver, an 18-room boutique hotel and art gallery run by the Vancouver Native Housing Society, made just one booking in all of January 2021, said Caroline Phelps, who runs the lodge's Indigenous artists-in-residence program.
The hotel catered mostly to in-province customers before the pandemic, but the return of cruise liners to the B.C. coast has attracted a new set of tourists, she said.
"For the rest of the summer, we're getting booked. Even during the weekdays," Phelps said. "We have a lot of cruise ship travellers that stay."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 28, 2022.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”